End of the Two-Space Age

Some thinkers argue that humankind should measure its own value by charting its progress throughout the ages. Pursuits such as science, philosophy and medicine serve as beacons signifying the advancement of homo sapiens from their feces-flinging, primate progenitors. As humans cling desperately to the surface of the earth—rocketing wildly around the flaming orb that will one day expand and consume the planet in an unforgiving omnicide—they find solace and meaning through measuring their achievements.

One of the most important aspects of this process has been people’s ability to shed the ways of the past and blaze forward (pun intended) into the future. Over the course of time, they abandoned medieval bloodletting for modern antibiotics; noxious outhouses for gleaming porcelain toilets; imprecise muskets for those crazy guns that can shoot around corners; and “Two and a Half Men” for…wait…nevermind. In this spirit of progress, humankind must now understand this maxim: the practice of putting two spaces after a period is dead.

As chronicled by Slate, the two-spaces-after-a-period rule emerged out of necessity in the typewriter age, when monospaced characters each spanned the same amount of horizontal space on the page—therefore, requiring an extra space after a period enabled easier reading. Since typewriters, and face-to-face interaction, have disappeared in the wake of modern technology, typographers and style guides agree that the single-space age has dawned.

For the sake of humanity, and out of respect for all that the species has achieved since emerging from caves covered in Paleolithic filth, make sure to use only one space after every sentence.